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I saw it yesterday at a late evening screening in Los Angeles with Wenders in-attendance, and he did an intro and stayed for a Q&A afterward (which ended at 1:30am!)

I'd describe Palermo Shooting as an interesting failure, though with some good stuff in it. And not as a worst-ever film, or even as awful like some folks. Also interesting to me was how the naturalistic Wenders of "Paris, Texas" days has embraced modern CGI effects.

Dennis Hopper, in his last role, was very good in a small but important supporting part in the very last scene of the film (don't walk out early or quit watching, cause you'd miss Hopper).

It's kind of a 3 act play defining by its locations: Act 1. Dusseldorf, Act 2. Palermo, Act 3. Gangi.

Not one of Wenders good ones. But if it had some editing-out of some of the more pretentious musing stuff, and general tightening-up, and a bit of clarification here and there, it could've been pretty good. Too bad...

For a long and detailed plot summary, see the German Wikipedia page (worthwhile to do even putting up with Google Chrome's German-to-English translation.) It helped clarify a lot for me. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo_Shooting (Note: the English Wikipedia page was very minimal).

I just saw the movie in International Film Festival of Durrës, eager as I was for another Wim Wenders experience. And I left the theater with mixed feelings. Images were so good, bur the story was so cheap. The apology of Death at the end of the movie was awful, as if written by a 15 years scholar. So was the dialogue with the shepherd. Cheap and cliché ideas about death and life. The presence in the story of G. Mezzogiorno was senseless and not justified at all. The story of a photographer that takes a shoot of Death, is not bad, whatsoever. But it surely didn't to be treated as in child books, with death coming towards you and moralizing about life and death. And above all, the pregnant Milla, pretending deeper art in VIP Photo shooting, gave a sense of pity. No worth seeing it twice.

Wenders' supreme quality as an author, to my view, is that he knows that his films are not so much about what images show, but about images themselves. This is his magic, and his curse. This is why i have a shelter in his films, and why so many increasingly misunderstand them (first reviews on this one show it will go to the same package). Wenders knows this, whenever he is making a film, he is reflecting on the nature of image, and how that affects vision, and how vision affects understanding, and how understanding affects meaning, and essence.

Not few times, he addresses directly the theme, and embeds it in the plot of the film. This is such a case. Film about images. People who are about image. People who become the images they fetch. The very first scene makes it clear. It "frames" (how meaningful this word is with Wenders) a landscape, through a window of a building which is in itself all about framing. A pure volume full of square holes, all of them corresponding to a different frame, depending on moment you look, position, distance to the window. This building reflects the personality of the photographer, it is in itself a succession of frames, a closed capsule interlaced with partial views to the outside.

Than we have a story about creating images. A character photographer who loses his soul because he becomes a faker, he forgets the essence, he no longer searches for a truth in the image, instead he creates his own fake truth. Fake Australian skies reflected on S.Paulo's windows, that kind of stuff. The introduction of Milla stands for this, as she is photographed 'artificially', and than transported to the "true" environment. Than the photographer retires, isolated, to a place he feels to be 'true' (a big port, Palermo means).

Now the big things happen in Palermo.

The woman. Her work is to recover images, it is to find the "truth" of images, it is to interpret the vision of somebody else. Those eyes of the painter, starring at the "camera", what he was seeing is what she wants to see. Check the oppositions, check how that fresco is worked on the film: detail versus global sight, understanding versus loosing the essence, long versus short. Check how the time of an image is understood. The woman takes years working on one image, the photographer produces thousands without understanding a single one.

The Death. It's not the death, it's Dennis Hopper, and this matters. To see how Hopper was inserted in this project made the whole thing come clear to me, and it completed a portion of my film life that i now know was incomplete. Hopper is here the designated master framer, the man who observes life, who pulls strings (even though he is only doing his job). He is a superior agent, someone who is beyond and above all that we see. When people look at him, he looks back. He makes the record of all that, we see that, that metaphor of arrows, of "shooting" with a double meaning. So he is framed as much as he is a framer. Now, remember The American Friend. See that film before seeing this one if you can, it may strike you as 2 halves of the same idea, as it stroke me. Check how similar are the characters Hopper performs. There he was also the master framer, the manipulator behind the actions that we had. In fact he was manipulating a "framer" (literaly, a man who created frames for paintings). He used the framer as he provided the main "image". That film, which i consider essential, was all about the same game of images. Now we have an update, on how times changed (and with it changed deeply our relation to images) and how Wenders himself changed. Dennis Hopper is the connection, and his role is pivotal.

Now, i believe that if you want to establish a successful relation to a creator you have to take his works for what they are. It's like loving beyond infatuation, like friendship beyond day to day chat. You have to enjoy the qualities and most important, acknowledge the flaws, and you have to live with that. That's my kind of relation with Wenders. His films in the last 10 years or so have become more and more on the verge of being an intellectual monologue, something you are supposed to sit and listen, and nod affirmatively with you head. That's something i won't tolerate with other filmmakers (Stone, Tarantino), but that i'm willing to put up with Wenders, because it matters to me what he has to say. If, like i did, you are able to put up with discursive dialogs, and the sensation that the man beyond the scenes is leading you to believe that he has the Truth, you may let this change your life. I did.

A side quality you might appreciate is how music shapes the environment, regardless of the scenery. Wenders was also great in understanding this, now he does it with the aid of portable music. The music editing is great

My opinion: 5/5

http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

Since I saw "Der Himmel über Berlin" approximately 3 years ago I've become a valid Vim Venders fan. After that day, I always thought, Wim Wenders had something original to say. Palermo Shooting hasn't changed my verdict, well... Almost. The Thing about Palermo Shooting that I guess, this movie tells the well known story with different methods. The methods that little bit um, shall we say cheesy? Of course, this doesn't mean that it's not a enjoyable movie. It's very "warm" movie after all. But despite all this "warmness", you think in somewhere, something/things is/are missing in this movie. Still, it's worth to watching.

This is probably one of the worst films I have screened in a very long time ! I was really looking forward to seeing Palermo Shooting, but what a disappointment. Beautiful cinematography, great music - but the plot and dialogs ? My goodness ! What was Wim Wenders thinking ? Such a waste of acting talent ! Especially the dialog - most lines were laughable they sounded so hollow ! We saw it in Cannes at the Grand Palais Lumiere where it premiered. So many people left before the end the end of the film, but fortunately all those who fell asleep during the projection kept the theater somewhat occupied. When the lights came back on there were enough bodies left for a polite show of support. What a shame though. Wim Wenders is capable of so much better than this mediocrity, we have seen it in the past. Not sure this film will ever be seen in a theater again and I believe that Palermo Shooting will be fleeting and quickly forgotten. For Wim's sake, I hope this is the case ...

This is easily Wim Wender's most pretentious movie to date, and that's saying a lot given that Wenders is perhaps the most pretentious director of his generation. There is so much symbolic Mumbo-Jumbo I don't know where to begin: Dungeons. Coffins. Dead people. Ghosts. Including Lou Reed as a black-and-white specter of himself. Flocks of sheep. A shape-shifting city skyline. Hooded strangers, shooting arrows and causing crashes. All of which I have seen before, and with more panache: In "Dark City", in Cronenberg's "Crash", Paul Auster's "Lulu on the Bridge", Tom Tykwer's "Winter Sleepers", even in TV's "Lost". I'm not even mentioning "The Devil's Advocate". At the height of his self-importance, Wenders has Dennis Hopper, in the part of Death himself, make a speech about the merits of analog photography. Sounds ridiculous? Go figure. But the weakest link is Wender's choice of Campino as photographer Finn Gilbert, the lead character. Campino, a German rock star in his day job, may be photogenic in an aging toy boy way, but an actor he sure is not. Anything he says sounds like a line from a script, and the script is weak enough to begin with. Wenders asks too much of him, and too little of his co-lead Giovanna Mezzogiornio, a fine actress restricted to sleepy smiles and sullen glances in this movie. Charming guest appearances by Jana Pallaske as a feisty arts student, Inga Busch as a sexy swimming instructor in Ugg boots and a bathing suit, and by the divine Milla Jovovich as her glamorous self. Nice enough soundtrack, featuring Bonnie Prince Billy, Nick Cave, and The Velvet Underground. Watch with your eyes closed.

In every serious artist's life there're great oscillations and changes. Years of great and masterful work are followed by long passages of creative drought and emptiness. But every artist who takes himself seriously one day must understand and face facts that his best years are over and it would be wise to drop the pencil and leave the field for a new, emerging generation.

After seeing Wender's latest "work" at its premiere in Berlin last night I felt that everyone in the audience quietly shared the same thoughts about this flick:

That this can hardly be called a film anymore - but is a preposterous, embarrassing, empty and painful blow to anyone who liked some of the better of Wender's works in the past.

"Palermo Shooting" is a pseudo-surreal, pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-cinematic derangement, full of lame clichés, bad acting and dialog that only serves one cause:

It holds proof to the sheer yet painful fact that Wenders' time as a serious filmmaker has long come.

I can't add much to hpark5's fine comments (though I'd encourage him or her to make use of paragraph breaks) so I won't attempt a full review of Palermo Shooting. I will mention, however, that when I saw the film at the Berlin and Beyond Film Festival in San Francisco, it was received enthusiastically by an audience of over a thousand people in a packed theater.

Wim Wenders was present and answered questions after the film. The things he said were exceptionally thoughtful and responsive. Although his work may be uneven because of his willingness to take risks, I thought Palermo Shooting a major success. Wender's integration of the death theme with Palermo's ancient and decaying physical environment was especially impressive.

To me, the crucial moment of the film occurs when Finn, the photographer, asks Death what he can do for him. Death says that no one has asked him this before and that the only thing that he can do is to live well for the rest of his life.

"It's a Wim Wenders film. It is either going to be brilliant or a complete joke. You have to go." This was the first thing I heard about the film Palermo Shooting, and seeing how Matt Noller was usually right about his critiques of film, I decided to go.

Not a full minute into the film, Matt and I simultaneously look at each other under the glow of the screen in the Grand Lumiere Theater and say, unanimously, "Uh-oh." To say that watching the film was an excruciating experience would be an understatement of its atrocities. Normally, when someone offends me deeply, I write a letter to try to sort out exactly what went wrong.

Here is my open letter to the film Palermo Shooting, entitled: You Stole Two Hours of My Life and I Would Like Them Back, Please! Dear Palermo Shooting, Why are you here in Cannes this year? You seemed so terribly out of place last night. This really, really wasn't your year. In fact, I'm kind of offended that you showed up. I am wondering if you were embarrassed by yourself last night, because you should be. You were acting ridiculous, and in the Grand Lumiere Theater and everything! I felt bad for you, really I did. Sometimes, when you were being particularly annoying, I tried to close my eyes and fall asleep, just to avoid second-hand embarrassment. But then your loud, bludgeoning German voice wouldn't allow for that. So, thanks, for starters.

But let's talk about this. I mean… I'm sure you didn't do it on purpose. It was a satire, right? Right? You know, like a joke? Like, "Oh, here's another film about the meaning of life and seizing the day and don't waste time… aren't I funny and witty, ha ha?" Right? You didn't honestly believe you were being original with all that "death is just the absence of love" junk, did you? …You did.

Well, in that case, I feel even worse for you. Most of the movie I felt like I was trapped in a living Myspace page, complete with melancholy music, out of kilter stares and a tattoo-clad German man that I never once cared about. OK, almost once, but then the whirring violin music made me think of a bad Italian soap opera and I forgot to care.

In fact, that music made me feel the opposite of compassion. There were times when I really hoped that hooded figure (you know, the one that shoots invisible arrows from the future) would kill that guy Finn and the movie would be over just so I didn't have to hear any more music.

Now I do have a few questions for you, just for my own peace of mind. Did that scene in Death's Library, the one between Finn and Frank (AKA Death), did that really happen? Or did I make that up? I am hoping that it was a figment of my sick imagination… my own selfish, masochistic ways that wanted the movie to be even worse than it already was. In all of the terrible scenes in all of the terrible movies, this one takes the cake. Not only was the dialog completely laughable (Finn: Not now! I love my life! Frank: It didn't look that way to me. And I looked very carefully. Finn: Maybe I was too busy! Frank: No, that's not it. You did not honor life, Finn Gilbert!), but the lighting, the scenery, the costumes… everything in this scene was terrible. Dennis Hopper has definitely run out of options if he agreed, unforced and non-drugged, to do that scene.

You did give us something, though. You did give us a fun game to play after the film, a game called "Would You Rather" consisting of all the things we would rather do besides watching your movie ever again. It went a little something like this: Would you rather watch an entire season of Dharma and Greg, or watch Palermo Shooting? While the choice was always easy, it gave us a break from repeating "that was just so bad!" over and over. You provided us hours of entertainment for after the movie, which I'm not sure was the point.

The only way your movie could have been worse was if Keanu Reeves had been the lead role. Actually, Keanu might have made it better! It is too hard to say at this point. (Which, is to say, that movie was really awful.) So I've been a little harsh, I'm sorry. But you should be sorry, too. Your movie took the spot of some other director's film that could have had its big break at Cannes. The script, the production, the financing, the editing… it all had to go through so many people that I'm not sure exactly how this film got made. Just think of all of the people that looked at this and said "Yes! Let's do it!" It's disturbing. However it happened, it was a waste. For a movie that was so blatant about "not wasting life"… you sure wasted everyone's time and money.

Maybe take your own mantra of "death is just the absence of love" and realize that you should spend more time living yourself and less time making movies. Not only would your life be better, but ours would, too.

Such is life, I suppose…

Morgan

Just to make sure to do justice, and that I had not misses something, I watched Palermo shooting twice before sharing how disappointing this mess of a film is.

Wenders has been going downhill, and severely for a couple of decades. Stick to his works of genius from the 1970's and 80's. Another reviewers said Wenders is "increasingly misunderstood."

That is the the problem. the problem is Wenders is increasing in a repetitive and hermetic bubble of his own making. See his most recent nonsense and ridiculously hagiographic portrait of Pope Francis to see the full decline.

A big-budget feature film version of a mixtape: the conceit of letting the audience hear what the protagonist's personal playlist sounds like in their head when they wear their earbuds was executed very well by the seemingly arbitrary song selection to juxtapose with the action. It never felt like a "music video" yet this film has the look and all the trappings. I've been a fan of Wim Wenders for a long time but I somehow missed this one on its first release. The dream sequences are quite unique and effective; this film is Wenders as a cinema stylist. The film has an advertising gloss with the kind of patchwork of collage. I had no expectations coming into the film but I knew that I wasn't in the mood for anything intense. I got want I wanted. It's a visually stunning but understated trip-to-Italy film and I felt like I discovered a hidden gem. A must for any fan of Lou Reed; a decade later perhaps it's time to re-watch Palermo Shooting.

Finn (Campino) is a German photographer. He is highly successful in his profession, but not in life. He can't quite put his finger on it, yet there's something missing and he is overwhelmed by dark thoughts. He decides to spend some time in Italy as an attempt to escape.

Palermo Shooting is a movie heavy on symbolism and with a clear philosophical orientation, a meditation about life and death. However, its good looks are its strongest asset. The setting is once again in the spotlight for Wim Wenders, first beautiful Palermo and then the gorgeous landscapes of a small Italian village.

The main character's interactions with Death are reminiscent of Bergman's The Seventh Seal, while his subjective way of experiencing reality and the use of special effects has a clear touch of German expressionism.

It's easy to tell this was a very personal project for Wim Wenders, but still not everything works. The philosophical aspect isn't that interesting or original, the dialogue leaves a lot to be desired, the soundtrack felt a bit off.

image - still and moving - digital - film - panorama - window - painting. how is the world described in photographic/image capture? who sees? framing. who is seeing? what is seen? what is shown? dreams. i am a camera. this is maybe an over extension of the metaphor, but clearly states the idea of the seer seeing. audience. and the seer showing. story through experience, not always linear or real. and always - great views of the city. great mix of language & languages. vision. so much feeling, showing and not telling. faces, moments, real, unreal... "I watch it for a little while = I love to watch things on TV" this was interesting to see in las vegas, of all the places in the world.